grew. he came out a bigger man with a bigger vision than he went in. so did some of the africaners that helped to bring about the end of apartheid. real leaders don't have their causes shrink to their size. real leaders grow and become bigger to the causes that are bigger than them. that's the legacy of nelson mandela. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. the mind of a leader. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews up in boston. so let me start with this. president obama continues his offense of getting great help from a 7% jobless rate.

the best numbers from since the historic financial crisis he inherited back in 2009. and if there's a single powerful insight i got from our time yesterday is that those of us looking at president obama and the man himself are looking at the same reality. we see the right wing attack and obstructing him relentlessly. he certainly sees it. we see the gall of economic justice as the big of our time and so does the president. and so does pope francis in rome. and this economic justice is what's driving him. letting him weather from the right. he wants to help those most in need. but he also said this man who wanted to be a transformational president generally comes when one controls the government. times like the early new deal, the great society, and even the early months of the reagan presidency. is that what he's calling for? a big upset victory? let's find out.

robert gibbs is a political analyst and former press secretary under president obama. and david corn is an msnbc political analyst and washington bureau chief at mother jones. robert, you know better about him than most people. you've worked with him in tight situations. i hope you got to see our program last night. we had a huge audience of 1.3 million. it's a big audience of people who tuned in just to hear the president. even on a night when so many hearts and minds were focused on the lives of nelson mandela. they took some time out to watch our program with the president. he said at that time when i asked him how do you do big deals and he said history says you only get a big program through when one party controls the government. the house, the senate, and the presidency. does that mean to you he's still holding out hopes he can pull a big upset in the sixth year of his presidency next november? >> well, i was certainly struck by the answer in which he was reminding those college students that a lot of them that might vote in a presidential year

don't tend to vote in a non-presidential year. but sometimes who's the speaker of the house is a job that's just as important as any other. so i think it's clearly something that's on his mind. and it was something he wanted to be on the minds of those students yesterday. >> can the brilliant get out the vote operation that blew everybody's socks off last november, can you replicate that in a midterm without his name technically on a ballot? >> yeah, and certainly that's always been quite difficult. i would say in the recent election in the governor's race in virginia, you did see turnout that didn't appreciably drop in terms of the percentage of the electorate that was made up by certain segments of that population that you would normally see in a non-presidential election. so i definitely think there is some hope for that and there's certainly some evidence for that. it's clear that that is going to

have to happen in order to see change in a government that might well be determined because of redistricting and the real estate of the political environment as much as anything else. >> yeah. david corn, he was very careful to say the people that don't necessarily show up meaning minorities and young people. there he was talking to a young people's crowd to project to a larger number of people using that audience. did you hear -- because the only implication could be. or he still hopes to get a governoring majority in both houses where he's able to get things done. like immigration, like a lot of things in implementing fully obama care? >> to me there's an interesting thing here of what comes between those two points. if you look at the speech he gave on economic justice wednesday, clearly the president has big ideas, has a big agenda. he's not done with that. these are things he's discussed from the very beginning since he

began running in 2007. to me what was interesting in watching your interview yesterday was when he talked about republicans. it's not he's completely resigned to the obstructionism, but i didn't get a sense of a lot of fight. he talked about being persistent. but i think if they want to rally -- and he referred to it. he has to be concrete in what he's to rally behind. take some of these grand ideas that he talked about on wednesday that he's talked about before whether it's raising the minimum wage, expanding head start to get investment going. he has more credibility now with these new employment numbers and making it concrete. sending bills to congress scene saying this is what we're going to fight for to give people next year motivation to go to the polls to support them even if he's not on the ballot. >> you know, today's poll numbers remind me of the old argument if you want to live like a republican, vote like a

democrat. because the stock market is double what it was he inherited in the spring of '09. >> don't i remember. >> i know you do. president obama's continuing the offensive against his enemies today. yesterday we witnessed yet another escalation in the ongoing war against his enemies and the obstructionist wing of the republican party. during the interview with me, he didn't pull any punches when it came to the issue of right wing gridlock in washington, d.c. just the way we see it here and you see it at home, he sees it the same way from the white house. >> i think you can look at it and you can say that the big challenge we've got is we've got a faction of the republican party that sees compromise as a dirty word. that has moved so far to the right that it would be difficult for a ronald reagan to win the nomination for the republican party at this point. i actually think there are a

bunch of republicans who want to get stuff done. they've got to be embarrassed. >> well, he said he's reminding people there -- in fact, we can remind them what he's talking about here. this is the reality of obstructionism for the president. house republicans have torpedoed immigration legislation that passed with a super majority over in the senate. so the house is holding it up. it's the same with a recent piece of legislation on workplace discrimination that sailed through the senate. this stops you from being discriminating in the workplace. they derailed in the house multiple attempts to put together a budget, the simplest budget tasks. and doing anything on health care. in fact, it's hard to keep count on this baby. they've voted 45 times to kill what the president produced without producing an alternative of their own. robert, in addition to all the things he wants to do, you know, there's the stuff he just can't seem to get done from the past. including getting judgeships

appro approved. you know what? i got the feeling we're going to get to it today in a few minutes, but it looks like the republicans think their cash cow is obama care. just keep milking that baby for all it's got over and over again. the problems with the rollout. >> i think the list you had is pretty instructive. and my guess is that's what you'll see him spend the bulk of the time on certainly in the next few months. i think immigration reform is something, obviously, there's a political pinch there for republicans. they can't go into the next election in 2014 and certainly into 2016 without having made some progress on that. if they don't do that, we know one thing. that the republican obstruction that you spoke of and the president spoke of, they'll never grow to being a national governing party. they'll be a regional congressional party based primarily in the south. they'll never be a national governing party. and that's certainly a big difference.

i do think that you will see, my hunch is when the calendar changes, a very focused agenda to do a lot of the things david mentioned in terms of pushing economic justice whether it's something like expanding the minimum wage and things like that going into next year's state of the union as both an agenda for the year and also that rallying cry that will get people motivated as we head into these off-year elections. >> one thing that will motivate people to vote is when people realize they're trying to stop them from voting. including ted cruz of texas has made it their mantra of the president's policies that they're killing the economy. the economy isn't dying at all. in fact, there are more and more signs it's thriving under the president's leadership. according to the new monthly jobs report out today, the economy added more than 200,000 jobs in november. and the unemployment rate is down to 7%, lowest level in five years. the president's enemies responded to the news the only way they know how by attacking

the affordable care act. well, here's only a sampling of their reactions to the good jobs news. keep in mind, these are statements supposedly about the jobs report. speaker boehner said, we need to protect all americans from the fundamentally flawed health care bill. eric cantor had this to say. quote, stop obama care from reducing hours and eliminating jobs. peter roscom of illinois said we continue to see the lost coverage, cost spikes on the strain of the president's health care law. then there's this sugar plum from tom price of georgia who dug up the old refrain that millions of americans are going to see their policies canceled. it seems no matter what the news, it's like what they did with 9/11 and rudy. every sentence needs a predicate of 9/11. whatever you're talking about, it's back to that. >> yeah. i'm surprised they didn't mention benghazi. because that seems to be the only other thing they have to talk about. i mean, they're going to just --

they're going to run out of obama care attacks eventually. because either millions of people will get new benefits, will sign up in the next month, next couple months and this won't be a good path to take outside of the republican presidential primary of 2016. or the law won't work out well in which case they'll have this bonanza, the republicans, politically speaking. this is going to run its course. but they have nothing to talk about on the economy which gives this president this great big opening. i mentioned this a moment ago. the numbers that came out today show that he has a lot of credibility to talk about how we make things better than they are now. and he has lots of ideas. he needs to make those things very concrete at this point in time. and start rallying people and winning back some of the people in the middle who he's lost in the last week or two because of the botched rollout. so he has a big opening here. >> i know one other opening i think he began to explain a little bit and i want to keep

doing here because it's un-american is to suppress the black voter in 36 states. by the way, if you want hispanics who come here to feel like they need a little break on immigration, they may vote for against him as long as they live. african-americans keep getting the message from this administration, we don't want you voting. and i think that's one great encouragement for people who are grownups saying if they don't want me to vote, i guarantee you i'm voting. thank you robert gibbs, thank you david corn. coming up, getting personal. the president really opened up as howard fineman said it best, never before have we heard a president talk about being president, what it feels like while you are. and what we've never heard before from a man in the white house. he got very personal for a guy who can be a bit distant as we know. plus as we remember nelson mandela, we've got my interview with him on the eve of his 1994 presidential victory in south africa, one of my great opportunities and actually emotional feelings of my life to see him on his way to the

presidency. and light hearted time tonight from comedy central known as the clown car of the right. to end iran's nuclear program would be to drop a small american nuclear bomb on iran. what a nice guy he is. what a smart future thinking -- you think they might want an atom bomb after we drop one of them? yes. you drop one on iran, they'll spend the rest of their history as a country making sure they've got something to shoot back. and speaking of the clown car, let it be rick santorum to compare nelson mandela's fight against apartheid to obama care. this is "hardball," the place for politics. bp supports nearly 250,000 jobs here. through all of our energy operations, we invest more in the u.s. than any other place in the world. in fact, we've invested over $55 billion here

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first of all, i would like to say you and the students here from au got a once in a life time opportunity to see in person a president talking about what it's like to be president while he's actually president. the last 15 minutes of this interview were extraordinary. i've never seen anything like it where a president kind of unburdened himself to you about why he's in the ball game. and i thought he made a very compelling case for his own decency. whatever the screwups were managerially and they were real. >> welcome back to "hardball." in the second part of my interview with the president of the united states yesterday, a

tempered and reflective barack obama talked to me about what it's like for him to be president and how it's changed him. howard fineman is a political analyst and jonathan capehart is an msnbc contributor. howard, i was really taken with your perception there. i actually missed it because i was so busy trying to prepare myself to follow up. but you hit something in your years of experience, presidents don't talk about what it's like to be me, if you will. >> no, they don't. and they don't do it in public. i mean, i've covered a lot of presidents, chris, and i've gotten to know them pretty upclose. and they are sometimes self-reflective. but usually in private and usually only momentarily. they don't let their guard down very much. but i think in this case in that interview yesterday which i still think was extraordinary, the president was kind of thinking out loud and talking out loud about his situation. let's face it, his poll ratings

are down, so he's got three years left in a second term he's not sure what he's going to do with. and i think sometimes he wonders how he's going to muster the motivation to muscle through, as he puts it. that's a phrase he uses. but here he was saying, look, as long as i'm in touch with the people, as long as i still can imagine in my mind, as long as i can still remember average folks i'm fighting for, i'll be okay. and as long as i remember now -- he said i understand now that things don't happen easily. that i'm just part of the long sweep of history and that i've got to push the boulder up the hill one inch at a time and there'll be somebody coming after me. a cynic might say he's just trying to extend responsibility to history and not just to himself. i don't take that interpretation. i think you saw a guy trying to remember why he became president in the first place after he's

been in washington for five years and how he's going to handle and motivate himself for the next three years. which i thought was utterly fascinating. and i think pretty convincing. >> yeah. instead of saying some big name historians have said nice things about me which keeps me going, he -- i'm serious. i met somebody the other day whose kid's life i saved. and you know, whether john meacham thinks i'm going earthquake o. i'm serious. the president reflected on his job and how he's talking about who he's working for. let's listen. >> if you feel those folks in your gut every single day, that will get you through the setbacks and the difficulties. and the things inherent in the

office. and i think the interesting thing about having been president for five years is it makes you humbler as opposed to cockier about what you as an individual can do. you recognize that you're just part of a sweep of history. and your job really is to push the boulder up the hill a little bit before somebody else pushes it up a little further and the task never stops of perfecting our union. >> you know, jonathan, i was just thinking isn't he the guy that went like this when somebody criticized him? dust off my shoulder like it doesn't mean anything to me? somehow i remember that and now he's basically saying it hurts. it's a burden to carry. >> yeah. i agree with everything that howard said in terms of his assessment of the president and what he had to say in your interview. the thing that i took away from it in addition to that was that what the president was telling you and telling the students there and telling the american

people is i know what's going on. i know my poll numbers are horrendous. i know that you're upset with what's happening with the healthcare.gov and the economy and a whole lot of other things. i know that you see that i can't get anything done because of republicans on capitol hill. i know all these things. i'm not running away from it. i'm not trying to pretend that it's not there. i know it has an impact on how i am as president. on how i am able to govern as president. so i get that. but the other thing i took away from that part of the interview, chris, is that it took me back to that guy who spoke to the democratic convention in boston in 2004. a very reflective person at the time. someone who had a vision of where he wanted to take the country. and that person is still there. that person, if you go back and

read his 2004 keynote speech at the democratic convention, a shiver will go down your spine because you will realize barack obama then the candidate for senate was basically laying out the road map for what he would do as president. >> well, let's take a look. the personal and professional assault this president has faced cannot be understated. still president obama spoke yesterday about the virtues of public service itself. and this is true not just of presidents but a lot of other people in lesser offices, if you will, will tell you this. what's best about the job is not the money or the fame although it is for some, but for many it's for helping people. and i mean that. here he is. >> it continues to be a way to serve that i think can be noble. it's hard. it can be frustrating. you got to have a thick skin. and i know it's tempting to say

why would i want to get in the mud like that and get slapped around and subjected to all kinds of scrutiny, but i tell you the satisfaction you get when you've passed a law or you've taken an executive action and somebody comes up to you and says, you know what? my kid's alive because you passed that health care bill, because he was uninsured. he got insurance, got a checkup, and we caught a tumor in time. or you see somebody and they say, you know, you helped me save my house. and i can't tell you what that means. it's pretty hard to get greater satisfaction than that. >> you know, we had two parts to the interview yesterday and then we came back for what we thought would be just a few minutes. in order to keep him going, i asked him a question i was

hoping would perk him up and get him into his soul. i said as a roman catholic it's hard not to think of the link between him and what he's been saying on economic justice and what the holy father the pope in rome has been saying ever since he became pope. and the president was quick on the uptake. here he is. >> i think pope francis is showing himself to be just an extraordinarily thoughtful and soulful messenger of peace and justice. i haven't had a chance to meet him yet, but everything that i've read, everything i've seen from him indicates the degree to which he's trying to remind us of those obligations. and we should take pride as a nation in our ability to work in concert. and if, in fact, we are helping

to assure that that kid over there who's not my kid has a chance at a good education or that guy over there who i'm not related to has a chance at a decent job and a decent retirement, i'm going to be better off. i'm going to be living in a society that is more cohesive and is, you know, going to create the kind of future for our kids that we all want. >> jonathan, it was so powerful. he's not a catholic. he's obviously been paying attention to what the pope has been saying about social justice. not talking about abortion so much or the issues that have been dominating in my religion so often. but talking about the old christian principles. looking out for poor people. saying the lowest person you meet is in the worst position. that basic christianity. and i was taken, in fact, he's been paying attention to that. he sure has.

>> right. the key thing is while the president's not a catholic, he is a christian. and when you listen to his speeches, when you listen to what he says whether it's health care or the economy, a lot of it is based in these, the ones who are struggling paycheck to paycheck, the ones near bankruptcy, the ones who are just trying -- they're playing by the rules, they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing and yet they're still being left behind. in an economy that's rushing faster than any of us can keep up with. so i'm not surprised that the president's paying attention to pope francis. and i'm not surprised that the president feels some sort of kinship with him because they both seem to be -- and i've never met pope francis, and maybe i will one day, but i think the two of them have at

their core this idea, this spiritual calling to look at -- not to look after, but to do things to help people better themselves. >> okay. howard, i'll have you back to tell me how he puts together the machiavellian with the franciscan here. there were two parts of that speech. one was i'm going to win this damn thing next year. and the other was i'm a nice person. thank you very much, howard, and great insight last night. i'll keep playing that tape. and thank you, jonathan. coming up, a look at my 1994 interview with nelson mandela, yes i'm old, on the eve of his election in 1994. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ female announcer ] we give you relief from your cold symptoms.

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has caused this country to pause and reflect on the legacy of a man whose imprisonment helped turn world opinion of south african apartheid. that started with a measure that passed with such support that it was able to override president reagan's veto. it imposed heart economic sanctions on south africa and also called for the release of political prisoner nelson mandela. bob dole vote t for those sanctions, so did mitch mcconnell, and newt gingrich. but of those who put themselves on the wrong side of history was future vice president dick cheney. he voted against the measure repeatedly that year. in 2000 he said he had no regrets opposing the measure. last night, fox television bill o'reilly and rick santorum took a weirdly different approach in assessing nelson mandela's legacy. >> i spent some time in south africa. he was a communist, this man.

>> yeah. >> he was a communist. all right? but he was a great man. what he did for his people was stunning. the sacrifices that he made. he could have repudiated and got out of that prison. he wouldn't do it. he was a great man. but he was a communist. >> you're right. i mean, what he was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer, but he was fighting against some great injustice. i would make the argument we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives. and obama care is front and center in that. >> what o'reilly said there is 180 from what others said as the first president of south africa, he leaned too much toward corporate leaders in encouraging them to invest and stay invested in south africa. as for santorum, equating it

against the health care act is absurd. much more on nelson mandela's legacy including my interview with him back in 1994. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. so ally bank has a raise your rate cd that won't trap me in a rate. that's correct. cause i'm really nervous about getting trapped. why's that? uh, mark? go get help!

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i'm milissa rehberger. at least nine deaths are blamed on a storm that left hundreds of thousands without power. the economy added 203,000 jobs last month pushing the national unemployment rate down to 7%. and joined by the first family, president obama lit the national christmas tree this evening in washington because of the rainy weather the president started the countdown at 5:00 instead of 10:00. back to "hardball."

my very first political action, the first thing i ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics was a protest against apartheid. >> nelson mandela will be remembered for many things. he will be certainly remembered for the way he led, his dignity, his extraordinary understanding not just of how to bring democracy and freedom to his beloved south africa, but how important it was that he first brought freedom to himself. >> welcome back to "hardball." president obama and secretary hillary clinton there recalled the remarkable influence of nelson mandela and his work to end apartheid in south africa and on the influence it had on the whole world. back in 1994 on the eve of his presidential victory back then, i interviewed nelson mandela for abc's good morning america.

i asked him about america's role in stopping apartheid. and i tell you, he was very generous here. let's listen to a piece of that interview. >> what is the appropriate role, generally speaking, of the united states in helping you realize your dreams for south africa? >> as you know, the united states is regarded as the leader of the western world. and the very first head of state welcomed me when i came out of prison and invited me to his country was the president of the united states of america george bush. and pledged the support. president clinton has continued with that policy. he is one of those who listens for carefully to our requests and he responds very positively.

the amount that he has located for south africa is a source of great encouragement to us. >> well, u.s. political support for nelson mandela has fostered -- was fostered by and grew in the congressional black caucus starting in the early 1970s. the congressional black caucus pushed to enact sanctions against south africa for apartheid. finally in 1986 under the leadership of ron dobbs, the anti-apartheid act was passed which was a resounding show of support for mandela. former senator ron delms joins us there. and as -- there it is beginning on a-1. bill khouwer, you were over there i remember meeting you with paul taylor. did you see all this coming from over there? could you sense this was all leading up to '94 were of course. what do you think made de klerk

make the decision that things had to change? >> look, i think sanctions were the right thing to do when they sent a message. and they made some difference. but sanctions were not what convinced de klerk to change course and become the bargaining partner that mandela needed. there were at least two other more important factors. one of them was the south africans themselves organized by the allies set out to make the country in their word ungovernable and they pretty much succeeded. and de klerk realized genie was out of the bottle. he could not put it back in. and the only question was how are they going to navigate the surrender. the other thing is communism collapsed. you know, the south africans enjoyed the support of those people solely because they were posturing against communist influence in africa. when the soviet union collapsed and china went capitalist, i think f.w. de klerk realized the

game was up. >> what -- could they have fought on? could the whites have said we're going to put up with some blood shed but we're keeping control? other countries have hung in there saying we'll take the heat, but we're staying. did the whites feel they could -- >> some of them did fight on. as you know, not just whites either. some of the black opponents of anc fought on. one of the first stories i covered was in the anc township where it's zulu warriors from a hostile that marched in the dead of night and slaughtered 40 people women and children among them. so, you know, it was not a simple matter of de klerk deciding to negotiate and everything got easy. you know, white bitter enders assassinated the head of the

communist party, one of the most promising young black leaders around that time. a bunch of kind of resistance types tried to storm one of the african so-called homelands. so there were people who tried to keep the fight going. but the balance just had had shift sod dramatically that, you know, de klerk was a realist. and they desperately needed a realist on the other side of the table. >> mr. delms, when i was talking about nelson mandela right before he was officially elected, he gave a lot of credit to the united states. i thought he was being very generous in saying our country was the most -- enemy of the world. do you think united states a as major player in getting him liber liberated and getting his party

majority rule? >> i think he did, chris. with all due respect to the gentleman on the show with me and i don't discount his comments, but a journalist did come to the united states several years later and said he had done research and that his research indicated that a telephone call took place between f.w. de clark and margaret thatcher wherein he asked her what should i do. margaret thatcher's response was, the dellums bill passed on a voice vote two years ago. it passed just recently on a record vote. the democrats now control the senate. it will pass the senate. it will become law. he said, then what should i do. her response was, free mandela and begin to negotiate a new south africa while you have leverage, because that divestment bill calls for global cooperation and you will have no leverage. whether he's right or wrong,

history is history, and he said that while that bill never became law, it hung over south africa like the sword of damocles. >> well said. thank you so much ron dellums and bill keller. we'll be right back after this. like a milk-bone biscuit. ♪ say it with milk-bone. ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪ ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪ ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪ [ male announcer ] the beautifully practical and practically beautiful cadillac srx. get the best offers of the season now. lease this 2014 srx for around $349 a month. during the season's best event from cadillac. ♪ if every u.s. home replaced one light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb,

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we're back. it's ban zesty week here on "hardball" including my interview with the president yesterday. but it's also been a busy week in the world of right wing absurdity. we couldn't let the week go by without the low lights. from arguing the benefits of global warming to making an unbelievable analogy between car crashes and pre-existing medical conditions. well, the clown car not only continues rolling along, it went into overdrive. let's start with this from duncan hunter on c-span wednesday. he said he did not want to engage talks over nuclear weapons with iran. but he also insisted there shouldn't be a ground war in the middle east like iraq or afghanistan. congressman hunter suggested another tactic if the need arose. let's watch. >> i think a ground war in iran with american boots on the ground would be a horrible

thing. and i think people like to toss around the fact that we have to stop them in some way from gaining this nuclear capability. i don't think it's inevitable, but i think if you have to hit iran, do it with boots on the ground, and you set them back a decade or two or three. i think that's the way to do it, with a massive aerial bombardment campaign. >> did you catch that? he suggested the use of nuclear weapons against iran's weapons sites and rather in other words do it with tactical nuclear weapons. well, this is scary talk, i'd say, having lived through the goldwater period. liz winstead is a cheomedienne d dean is a columnist for "the daily beast." i want to start with liz. you know, nuclear weapons are not small. they're not pea shooters. they kill lots of people. and once you use them against an islamic country, do you think that people in the rest of the arab world, the world around iran, would say my god, they're willing to use nuclear weapons in this region. they might do it again. and wouldn't iran say we're

going to have frickin' nuclear weapons to make sure this never happens again? they are putting them guaranteed on the road to nuclear weapons if you hit them with one. is this guy -- i don't want to say crazy. i want to support mental health, but this guy, what is he? >> you know, making friends wherever they go, this new gop. this is just, chris, another example of them proving that they have never negotiated anywhere ever. they wouldn't negotiate on health care, immigration, anything. it makes me wonder, are they in relationships? like what is it like at home? you know, your wife disagrees with you -- >> nuke her. >> -- and you just nuke her! exactly. >> that will stop the argument. dean, welcome to the show. >> thanks. >> your thoughts about a guy who has obviously not lived through the cold war where we did avoid using nuclear weapons. he has not lived through discussions of what nuclear weapons do. and he acts like they're pea shooters like we'll just shoot about five or six people, blow up a couple items and that will be the end of it.

nobody will ever notice we used nuclear weapons and might think i've got to get me one. your thoughts. >> he talks about it like he's ordering a side dish at a restaurant. like i'll take the french fries and the nuclear weapons. it's like the guy's in the republican caucus, yeah, nuclear weapon, that makes sense. he said it with no sense of hey, i'm going to say something really insane right now. he said it like it was an actual viable alternative. and i love the irony, though. he says he can't just iran because this are extremists who run that country. guess what, kettle, black, meet each other. are you craze? >> i know. >> i say it in a way of how irresponsible of a leader can you be? >> yeah. >> right. >> it's like the one flaw, guys, in c-span, it's a wonderful phenomenon. you get everything straight. there's no commentator to say, you're crazy! you're crazy! because all ideas are equal on c-span. anyway, most conservative critics of the new health care law at least pretend to sympathize are those 40 million

americans, many who have preexisting conditions and currently or have been denied coverage by coverage. when georgia's insurance commissioner ralph hudkins, he's a republican, he used an unbelievable analogy to explain why forcing insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions is a bad idea, he says. let's watch. >> let's say you're going along and you have a wreck. and it's your fault. well, a preexisting condition would be then you calling up your insurance agent and saying, i'd like to get collision insurance coverage on my car. and your insurance agent said, well, you've never had that before. why would you want it now? and you'd say, well, i just had a wreck, and it was my fault. and i want the insurance company to pay for my -- to repair my car. and that's the exact same thing on preexisting insurance. >> and he's supposed to be one regulator in the insurance

industry. anyway, he's since conceded it was a poor analogy. he said today that as the prostate cancer victim himself, he can sympathize are other people who have preexistingen cans. preexisting conditions. i don't know why people are talking that way because people do have car insurance before they have wrecks and then like to have insurance before they have existing conditions but oftentimes they lose their job, their insurance, they have to go get another job with new insurance, right? that's what we're usually talking about, liz. no sympathy from this guy who looks like the insurance company's best friend on earth. your thoughts. >> well, i just -- i was born with a spinal curvature. and it's not -- >> how did you do that? how did you do that? >> well, clearly, i was drunk and did something horribly wrong. but, i mean, it's like that's the whole thing. sometimes these people say things that are so kooky that we all sit -- i'm surprised, actually, chris, that you've been in the news business so long that your broadcast, you don't have a big purple bruise

on your forehead from going i can't believe what i'm watching! >> well, i do. let's go to another one. one more. do you have time for one more here? no, we don't have time. thank you very much, dean, for joining us. >> sure. thanks for having me. >> it's the clown car. i have promises for you and one of them is there will be more news from the clown car and you'll be back. unfortunately, about the clown car, fortunately for you. have a good weekend. thank you, lizz, and dean, abidala. we'll be right back after this. and we've made a big commitment to america. bp supports nearly 250,000 jobs here. through all of our energy operations, we invest more in the u.s. than any other place in the world. in fact, we've invested over $55 billion here in the last five years - making bp america's largest energy investor. our commitment has never been stronger. ♪

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let me finish tonight with this. as i said earlier in 1986, i traveled with an american congressional delegation to south africa. the purpose was to encourage action on that comprehensive anti-apartheid act. what we called then the caaa. i'll never forget sitting with a largely african-american delegation led by bill gray as the last white south african holdout rejected the very very notion that the united states should take a hand in forcing an end to white supremacy in that country. forget that ronald reagan vetoed that sanctions bill congress passed by the house that june and the senate that august. nor did i forget that there was an overwhelming bipartisan vote in both houses that october to override reagan's veto. it was all part of my political coming-of-age, the story i tell in my new book "tipper and the gipper when politics worked." it would mean a lot if you got

maybe several copies for "hardball" fans. you know and love those people. give them a book. you "hardballers" go at it this weekend. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts now. good evening from new york. happy friday. i'm chris hayes. one day after the death of south africa's anti-apartheid leader and founding father, tributes and remembrances are rolling in from leaders from all over the world and across the ideological spectrum. from vladimir putin who praised mandela's commitment to humanism and justice. to benjamin netanyahu who called him one of the outstanding figures of our time, to iran's president, rouhani, who praised his belief in the freedom and equality of all humans. pretty much every leader in between. in the u.s. the same thing is happening. emotional eulogies have been